


Flower Looks Good (in Your Hair)

by Machiavelien



Series: Mr. & Ms. Jones [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mr. & Mrs. Smith Fusion, Assassins & Hitmen, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers, Enemy Lovers, Established Relationship, F/M, Feelings Realization, Implied Sexual Content, Married Couple, Mob Boss Tony Stark, On the Run, Partners in Crime, Protective Tony Stark, SHIELD, SHIELD Agent Michelle Jones, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-01-29 01:15:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21401743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Machiavelien/pseuds/Machiavelien
Summary: Peter, infamous hitman for the Stark crime family, and SHIELD's top agent Michelle Jones got married without knowing about each other's double lives. After a botched hit job, hilarity and sexy adventures ensue as the rival killers deal with the fallout from sleeping with the enemy.(Mr. & Mrs. Smith AU: Part I)
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Series: Mr. & Ms. Jones [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1585426
Comments: 84
Kudos: 275





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out the [fic playlist here!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5KYyL0VrcrIXlbEO2ZT2UL?si=vnVa7NsaTqesQib8rPiBhA)

Michelle never thought that they would end up like this: screaming at each other, throwing shit around their suburban McMansion, taking cheap shots whenever they could. 

Mr. and Ms. Jones, the hot mess of their cul-de-sac. How pathetic. 

But in retrospect, this all seems so inevitable that she’s embarrassed that she didn’t see it coming sooner. It’s how they started, after all—a fiery and reckless one night stand three years ago, amidst the destruction and violence of an erupting gang war in Bogotá (that she _ might _have set off in taking out ‘the barracuda’ syndicate’s kingpin).

While other tourists were fleeing the first chance they could, Michelle had let a man she just met that day climb into her bed and between her legs, before she had even gotten his name.

It was all Peter’s fault. He had disarmed her with that stupid smile when he first caught her eye across the smoky hotel lobby. Gunfire was still ringing in the air, barely drowned out by the shouts of terror and panic in the streets, and uniformed men with rifles were interrogating everyone in the hotel about tourists traveling alone. 

“She’s with me,” he had told the armed men in English, puffing up his chest as he crossed the room towards her. Michelle remembers thinking about how endearing it was at the time, unaware that he was also covering for himself.

“_Está bien. Ella conmigo,_” he repeated in broken Spanish when he got to her, snaking a protective arm around her waist, his jaw set and determined. Up close, she could smell the hint of a spicy cologne beneath his sweat, and she fought the sudden urge to lick the glistening sheen off his throat.

She can still remember the rumbling thunder, both threatening and promising as lightning crackled in the sky, and the rum burning down her throat and into her belly, all mixed up and igniting a need deep inside her. Her head was swimming and her heart was pounding, and then the storm broke.

Shaking her hair wild and free, Michelle had made a fool of herself, dancing in the rain and letting her thin gauzy dress get soaked through. Pressing himself against her from behind, Peter grabbed her by the hips and made sure she could feel what she was doing to him.

Pulling the hem of her skirt down to cover the blade she had strapped to her thigh, Michelle looked back at him over her shoulder coyly, letting their noses brush together, and she imagined what it would be like to fall in love with a stranger.

_ Latino caribo, mondo bongo _

_ The flower looks good in your hair... _

Her SHIELD training had covered all the psychological profiles she would likely encounter on the field—the controlling macho types, psychotic killers, billionaire megalomaniacs, stoic henchmen, etcetera etcetera. They were all the same in the end, just men with something to prove.

But Peter seemed so _ different_, even for a civilian: he was sweet and charmingly earnest, but still cheeky enough to keep her interest. The way his shoulders filled out the loosely buttoned cotton shirt didn’t hurt either, and she liked the way he let her ride him for most of the night, and how he had brought her breakfast in bed the morning after. 

But now, there's a chasm between them, a huge and empty space that just keeps filling up with everything that they don’t say to each other. 

Resting her head against the wall, Michelle closes her eyes and wills the strange burning sensation behind her eyes to go away. Exhaling slowly and quietly, she catches the hot tear running down her cheek with her fingertips and swipes it across her lips; she expects it to taste bitter, but it’s only salty. Almost sweet.

“Your aim's as bad as your cooking, sweetheart... and that's saying something!” Peter calls out from the other room.

“Baby, I’ve never cooked a day in my life,” Michelle spits back, looking down to check how many rounds she had left in her pistol, which is zero, of-fucking-course. “Catered meals delivered on demand, courtesy of SHIELD.”

“Web of lies! Jeezus, Michelle. When will it end?!” Peter exclaims, his footsteps coming closer.

“I dunno, _The __ Spider_. Whenever you tell me everything you know about the Starks and their crime network?”

Kicking her leg out just as he rounds the corner, Michelle trips Peter and pistol whips him before he can get up again, and wrenches his weapon out of his hands. Cursing loudly, Peter knees her in the side, bringing her down on top of him, and they wrestle each other for his gun. When it goes skittering across the floor, he throws her off of him and tries to get back on his feet, but she’s faster and he has to hold her back by the ankles.

She kicks him in the face and wriggles out of his grasp, scrambling around for anything to use as a weapon before he can get back up, but she comes up empty.

”Come on, honey,” he taunts from behind her. “Come to daddy.”

With a growl, Michelle spins around and decks him in the face as hard as she can with that flower vase he hates, and Peter stumbles back in surprise. Taking advantage of his momentary shock, she grabs a towel from the laundry pile and throws it around the back of his neck to yank him towards her, slamming her forehead against his.

Blinding stars fill her vision, but she still manages to kick him squarely in the middle of his chest and send him flying back into their china cabinet, shattering the glass and wood.

He slides to the ground, covered in shards and splinters, and looks up at her in a daze. A curl of brown hair flops over his forehead, and she hates how cute he looks even when he’s trying to kill her.

“Who’s your daddy now?” she pants, holding her fists up. Her head is still rattling from head butting him, but her blood is coursing through her hotter than ever.

Peter sighs in defeat, throwing his head back against the broken cabinet. The cuts on his cheek and forehead are bleeding. “D’you think we’d end up like this? When we first met?”

“I wasn’t thinking that far ahead,” Michelle replies, still standing in a defensive stance.

“Well, I thought you looked like Christmas morning. I don't know how else to say it...” He glances up at her, feigning nonchalance. “What about you?”

She swallows the lump in her throat, assessing the sincerity in his big brown eyes. "I thought... you looked like the most beautiful mark I’d ever seen,” she finally replies. 

He winces and tries to recover by pretending it’s because of the bruise on his jaw. It makes something unpleasant clench in her chest, and she lets her guard down for a second, which is all he needs to leap back onto his feet.

Grabbing Michelle by the wrists, Peter jerks her arms over her head and slams her back against the wall hard, knocking the wind out of her. Her entire body aches and there’s a sharp pain in her side and down her left leg, and this is the most fucking _alive_ she has felt in years. The realization makes her breathless and delirious, and she throws her head back to let out a cackle. 

Confused, Peter tightens his grip on her arms anyway and twists her around so he can subdue her and bring her to her knees, and she lets him. 

“You gonna behave if I let you go?”

Wriggling her hips, Michelle grinds herself against his crotch and gasps out, “Never.”

He groans but still keeps her locked in a restraining hold with both arms. "You think this story's gonna have a happy ending?" he asks, voice low in her ear.

She lets the edge of her lips curve into a small, sad smile. “Happy endings are just stories that haven’t finished yet.”

Before he can respond, she rolls to her side and throws him over her shoulder, and when he’s on the ground, she climbs over him to straddle him between her thighs and press her forearm against his neck in a chokehold. Instead of getting himself out from under her, Peter grabs her ass with his free hands and squeezes. 

With a frustrated growl, Michelle leans her weight into his neck, and he chokes out, “Worth it…!”

She rolls her eyes at him, but yelps when he swings his legs around without warning and throws her off of him, and then he’s on top of her. Peter grabs her face and kisses her hard. 

Hissing when the cut in her lip splits wider, Michelle rakes her fingernails up his back, making him grimace in pain, and hooks her legs over his hips. His eyes are dark and filled with hunger as he looks down at her, and he goes in for another kiss. She opens her mouth to him, and spreads her legs wider so he can settle on top of her completely, but her dress is in the way, so he tears the skirt by the seam.

As they continue to kiss and bite at each other furiously, the hot need pulsing between her legs becomes more insistent, so Michelle grinds herself against him again, trying to line herself up with his hard-on as it throbs beneath his pants. Her hands make their way to his belt, and she smacks him across the cheek when he tries to take it off for her, making him huff and laugh in disbelief.

With a single movement, Peter gets back on his feet and picks her up with her legs around his waist, and looks for a clear space in their living room that’s not covered in broken glass or drywall dust.

“Bedroom?” he suggests.

She shakes her head “Too far. Couch?”

They survey the mess around them. A dam had broken, leaving chaos and debris swirling in its wake. The destruction of their home, the wreckage of the life they built together.

But no, it wasn’t _ their _life, it was just a simulation of one. And they tore it all down, smashing it up so they could start all over again. Michelle’s breath catches in her chest. Why does she want to start all over again?

Michelle shakes her head vigorously. _ Stupid! Stupid! Why won’t you learn? _

“Yeah, I don’t know if I like how we remodeled, either,” Peter says, setting her down to sweep the sweaty bangs off her face. “Might have gone too far with that broken-down industrial-chic thing.”

Michelle smiles at him, shrugging her uninjured shoulder. "I dunno. I think I like it better broken," she says, licking the cut in her lip. 

“Good,” Peter chuckles, trying to mask the light cough in his chest; she had gotten him pretty good with an uppercut. He brushes his thumb softly against her lip and it comes away bloody. He licks it off, eyes never leaving her. “I like it better broken, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my first un-beta'd one shot, hope you enjoyed! Having some writer's block lately, so it was satisfying to pump this out in one (very long) sitting and not review/angst over it twenty times....  
Hope you enjoyed it! should I continue this AU? Any other similar crossovers / AUs you're into?
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr @Machiavelien!](https://machiavelien.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Mr. and Ms. Jones' shootout.
> 
> aka. chapter 2 of my "one-shot" 😬

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to challenge myself and keep this fic rated M instead of Explicit, but there *is* some steaminess going on here.

Michelle is pretty sure they're about to fuck, and it's been so long since she's last had sex that she almost doesn't care that her husband is a liar and a fraud, and probably still out to kill her.

But the way his forearms flex as he inspects his pistol, his rough hands handling the piece with such skill—it turns her on, seeing this side of Peter, as much as it makes her mourn the person she thought he was. 

Michelle should have known sooner; he was too good to be true, right from the start: Peter the mild-mannered MIT-grad and engineer who loves cooking, amateur photography, and tinkering with gadgets in his workshop—plus, working out a ton. In fact, he must have been trained precisely for this, to become his mark's—_ her _—ideal guy in every way. 

Michelle sighs. She was such a fool. Still is, actually, given that she can't help the throbbing desire that's blooming in her lower stomach. Over what? His goofy smile, the way his jaw clenches when he concentrates? Or how well Peter apparently knows his way around a Beretta M9 semi-automatic? 

At first it felt like freedom, the way she and Peter continued to live their separate lives under the same roof as Mr. and Ms. Jones. They never questioned each other, and rarely fought—over the last year, they barely even spoke to each other about anything that mattered. 

If she's honest with herself, Michelle has to admit that whatever they have, it isn't a marriage. Spouses with benefits? Roommates who fuck and and share a mortgage?

She eyes her own gun, unloaded and forgotten on the floor. Picking it up, she checks the chamber and calmly reloads it now that her husband wasn't hunting her down in their own house.

Was the nice guy thing an act all along? Who is the real Peter? The man who will catch an insect in a cup so he can let it go free outside, or 'The Spider'—the infamous assassin who specializes in strangling his victims with a dissolving polymer web-fluid that never leaves a trail?

They've been together for over three years now, and she wonders when he was planning to come for her had she not found out that he was a professional hitman. Would he have strangled her in her sleep? Shot her? Or maybe he was supposed to bring her in to Stark, SHIELD's top covert operative all tied-up like a present. A trophy.

Michelle's hand trembles as she holds her now-loaded weapon. 

"You okay there?" Peter asks, though his eyes focused on her gun as he surreptitiously clicks off the safety on his own piece.

Brushing off her dress as she comes to stand, Michelle nods slowly and wraps her fingers around the grip of her pistol. Time feels like it has slowed down, and her every movement is like pushing through molasses, the weight of uncertainty holding her back.

But when Peter makes a sudden movement, her instincts take over and Michelle’s arm flies up to point her gun at his face. Likewise, she finds herself staring down the end of the barrel of his gun.

_ So here we are. _

If she squints, the grimace on Peter's face almost looks like hesitation, but it's probably just regret. They hadn't gotten in a final good-bye fuck before this inevitable showdown, and he's probably thinking about what a waste it would be to blow her pretty head off. 

"Come on! Do it!" Michelle screams. Her hand starts to shake uncontrollably the longer she points her pistol at him. Fuck, she never shakes—not when she was a brand new trainee, and not even when she sniped a Skrull taking the form of her dead aunt Anna, right in the head. 

Infuriatingly, Peter doesn’t say a word as they stare each other down; he just looks at her with those stupid, _ manipulative _ brown eyes. His lips are slightly parted, like he’s about to say something, the words caught in his mouth.

"No. I can't," Peter sighs, lowering his gun. "I can't do it, Michelle."

She blinks sweat out of her eyes, confused and suspicious. Her eyes flit fast, looking for tricks, but all she sees is her husband gazing at her with a strange mix of resignation and peace. 

For the first time in her life, the next moments are a complete blank to her. Michelle can usually envision at least four or five alternative outcomes for every move, and she's always at least a few steps ahead of everyone else, but now...

"Fuck you! Do it! Coward!" She shouts, her voice cracking. Her heart is in her throat, choking her. "You need a permission slip from Tony Stark or something? Pull the damn trigger!"

"So you don't have to?" His voice isn't accusatory, but it's firm.

Michelle's face burns as the unfamiliar sensation of wanting to cry takes over her senses. "Just… do it, Peter," she chokes out. "I know you haven't done a damn thing I've asked of you for years, but just this once…"

"Hey, I called up the cable company that time like you told me to, and didn't even fall for the premium add-ons they tried to upsell me," he says, eliciting a watery laugh from Michelle.

Peter takes a step closer to her, holding his arms open. Her gun is still pointed at his face, and her eyes are blurring, the tears stinging at the edges, and she can't breathe in deeply enough.

"I'll shoot if I have to, Peter. Remember? All business."

Something unreadable passes across his face, but Peter takes another step closer anyway. Michelle's arm suddenly feels too heavy, and it drifts down from his face until the muzzle of her gun is pressed against Peter's chest. His eyes don't leave hers as he leans into it. Her finger is barely a hair off the trigger, and her head feels light.

Is he calling her bluff? Or is this what trust looks like? Blind faith in her?

With a slow exhale, Michelle lowers her weapon and clicks the safety back on, but doesn't move her feet. Then his arms come around to her, pulling her close.

She lets herself collapse into him and buries her face in his neck, inhaling the familiar warm scent of him. Her stomach clenches with some kind of homesickness; she wants to go back to a place and time that never really existed, to be held by someone who was just a made up cover identity. 

"I should have known better right from the start," Peter murmurs into her hair. "That a woman like you… god, Michelle, you have no idea. When I first saw you in that hotel—"

"Yeah, yeah, I looked like Christmas morning."

He scratches the back of his head. "Uh, about that—I'm actually Jewish.” 

"What?”

“Well, my mom was, so technically I am—oh, she’s actually dead, I didn’t lie about that."

“Peter, we seriously need to have every conversation all over again."

He nods in agreement. "Look, Michelle, when I first saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, and I couldn't believe that you'd even talk to me, let alone—"

"Let you fuck me in the street?"

Peter wrinkles his nose at her bluntness, but it's true. After finishing an entire bottle of rum between the two of them, passing it back and forth as they wandered Bogota's historic old town, Peter and Michelle had ducked into a narrow side street, giggling like fools falling in love.

Then he pressed her up against the facade of some colonial building, hiked her skirt up to her waist, and took her right there on that dark cobblestone street.

"I should have known right then that I was a mark," Peter continues, his mind caught up in the same memory. "This gorgeous woman with a mind that goes a million miles an hour… and that death glare of yours! It's like someone created, or engineered, the perfect woman for me, and she just happened to show up when I needed her…"

He shakes his head, abashed and chuckling ruefully at himself. 

Michelle frowns. "You weren't a mark. At least, not mine. I thought I was the target..." 

Looking up at her, Peter raises an eyebrow. "You weren't my target in Colombia, I was there for Fisk's new local boss."

"I was there for the Barracudas, they’d been smuggling chitauri weapons."

They stare at each other for a moment, letting the information sink in. Michelle takes a step closer to him, and when he smiles, she gives in and pulls him towards her.

"Sorry about that," she says, gently running her fingertips along the split on his cheekbone that her fist gave him.

He grunts but doesn't stop her, and just unzips her dress and lets the fabric drop to the floor. Yanking him by the collar of his rumpled shirt, Michelle purposefully kisses him where his lip is cut. Peter hisses in pain, but he kisses her back just as hard. Making his way to her neck, he nips at her soft skin.

Then he’s kneeling before her, sliding his hands up the back of her legs and kissing the inside of her thighs. 

"I've missed how good you smell," Peter says, voice muffled against her inner thigh. 

"Yeah, right. I'm all sweaty," she laughs nervously, squirming against him, but he just moves further up her thighs.

Peter hooks his thumbs onto the straps of her underwear and drags them down her legs. "Are these new?" 

"New to you," she replies huskily, voice thick as she looks down at him on his knees. 

"Mmm, gotta get acquainted then," he hums. “Bedroom this time?”

The moment Michelle nods, Peter shoots to his feet and immediately picks her up by the ass, making her wrap her legs around his waist for support, and carries her upstairs.

_Lay lady lay_   
_Lay across my big brass bed_

===

"Does it ever keep you up at night? What we do?" asks Michelle, sitting down next to Peter on the floor of their kitchen.

"Nope," he says, shrugging as he eats another spoonful of cereal.

She licks the yogurt off her spoon, face scrunched up thoughtfully. "Yeah, me neither. Always sleep like a baby after."

“Better than Ambien,” he nods, and some milk dribbles down his chin. Michelle rolls her eyes at the professional mob enforcer and stone-cold killer beside her, her _ husband_.

Peter had managed to cobble together a post-coital (“_Mid_-coital,” he’d insisted mischievously) snack from the remnants of their kitchen.

Michelle admits she might have gone overboard with the shotgun earlier, but in her defense that was at the very beginning of their shootout when she was at her angriest. 

"So. How many?" she asks. 

Peter puts his spoon down. "How many? Oh we’re asking _ those _questions now. Ok... I'll go first, then. I don't keep exact count, but I'd say, uh, high fifties, low sixties. I mean, I know I've been around the block and all, but…"

"Two hundred and fifty three," Michelle replies, keeping her eyes on her bowl of yogurt and granola.

"What? How?" asks Peter, his voice strained.

"Some were two at a time," she says without looking at him, but she can still feel his eyes burning into the side of her head. "Did a group thing once, half a dozen HYDRA guys."

Peter lets out a strangled sound that's a cross between disbelief and irritation. "Well, it's not about quantity, anyway. It's about the finesse of the kill—"

"Oh, I finessed my kills alright," says Michelle, sticking her tongue out. Laughing, Peter dives in to kiss her, but she evades him and gets his nose with yogurt from her spoon.

“Is that how it is now? We’re back to enemies, I see,” he says, grabbing her around the waist and trying to rub his nose on her. 

She pretends to fight him off, accidentally grazing his crotch and bare chest with her hands. Her legs are still trembling, and she’s too sore to sit on the floor completely, but Michelle is eager to get Peter back into bed as soon as they’re done eating. Which, she has decided, is now.

But before Michelle can go in for the kill, a peel of gunfire goes off, like hail rattling against the outside of their house. A windowpane shatters somewhere, and heavy footsteps are coming toward their front and back doors. Peter takes her hand and they look at each other, taking in the cuts and bruises on their faces. 

With a solemn nod, they both stand up, hand in hand, ready to face whatever was coming, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed that! I couldn't leave them without some steamy action. Thank you for all the kudos and comments!  
Please let me know what you enjoyed, or what you'd like to see next time!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Jones go on the run.

"You know you're not the first woman in the world to find out that her life's a lie," said her co-worker Agent Liz Allan when Michelle first learned the truth about her husband.

"Yeah, but I thought it was _ my _ lie," Michelle had replied, gripping the edge of the console as her eyes scanned the irrefutable evidence before her. 

Plastered all over the monitors in SHIELD's war room, footage of her botched hit job replayed from various angles, displaying her embarrassment in front of all her colleagues and superiors. 

"I told you we couldn't afford any mistakes," said Nick Fury, her boss and head of SHIELD.

Michelle swallowed the knot in her throat. "There was another player, sir."

Fury didn't turn to her and kept his scrutinizing glare on the screens. "We do not leave witnesses. If this player lD'd you... You know the rules. You have 48 hours to clean the scene, Jones."

It was supposed to be an easy one, a quick snipe job while the target was getting transported to Fisk Headquarters. Michelle had set-up her stake-out with her usual efficiency and got into position: stretched out on the shooting mat and calibrating her rifle with time to spare.

And then she saw him, the target, through the window looking into a building below. She was invisible from this angle, but would have a direct shot once the target moved one more step forward... 

But just as Michelle had him literally in her crosshairs, someone in a black and red spandex suit came swinging across the air on a grappling hook and landed on a rooftop further below her—but closer to the building with the target. He dropped the bag he was carrying over his shoulder down by his feet, and tugged off his mask and shook out his hair. 

Michelle scoffed. What was the point of wearing a mask to begin with? 

Though, she couldn’t help noticing how handsome he was, even from afar. The way he stood confidently in the form-fitting suit, when he bent over to pull a weapon out of his bag... How he clenched his jaw while scanning the scene, and the thick curling hair falling over his forehead… 

Michelle nearly knocked her riflestand over when she realized that she was staring at Peter, her _ husband _, without his glasses on—but carrying a Barrett M95 sniper rifle of his own. 

The camera footage froze on his face, from a side angle that looked so familiar yet completely alien to her at the same time. Who was this man? Who did she let into her life, into her heart, inside her body?

Michelle’s heartbeat was thundering so loudly in her ears, blood rushing fast and panicked, that she could barely hear anything else, not even Liz almost shouting in her ear to snap out of it. 

"What are you going to do, Agent Jones?" Liz repeated.

"What Fury told me to do, Agent Allan," Michelle sighed. "Clean house."

So, cradling her wounded pride in her heart, Michelle went home to prepare dinner, as usual, and kill her liar of a husband.

"You obviously want me dead," Peter had said to Michelle during their shootout against each other, "and I'm becoming less and less concerned about your well-being."

Then they figured out that they weren't each other's mark after all, at least not in the beginning, and that they really were just stupid enough to unwittingly marry the enemy. However, their professional code still dictated that they kill any and all witnesses when their cover was blown.

But then they ended up on the floor of their decimated living room, then their bed, and then the floor of their bedroom, and then back to the bed… and somehow lost all their clothing along the way until they were left pressing kisses on the bruises and cuts on each other's bodies.

===

Michelle knew there would be consequences for her failure. _ Failures_—plural, actually. Aside from the only failed hit in her entire career so far, she had also fallen for the enemy, fucking married him, and remained fooled for years. 

Then she couldn't even bring herself to shoot him when she had the chance. That was the worst part—the feeling of losing control, or rather, the realization that she wasn’t ever in control in the first place, that she hasn't been in control at all.

But Michelle didn't think their employers would actually join forces to go after them both, nor did she think she and Peter would find themselves under fire from an army of professional assassins in their own home. It was as if SHIELD and the Stark crime family actually believed that she and Peter, together, would be more dangerous than anything else either organization has faced alone.

After fending off the attack and escaping their bullet-riddled colonial revival house before it got blown up, the Jones had stolen their neighbor's minivan and made their getaway—together.

"Flash is gonna be pissed when he finds out we stole his car," Peter says gleefully, hanging his torso out the passenger-side window to line up his next shot.

"_Eugene _ deserves it for still using a highschool nickname like Flash," says Michelle, swerving out of the cul-de-sac and onto the highway. 

"Maybe he's a pro too and that's his alias," suggests Peter, checking that their weapons were all loaded.

"Not all of us have dorky codenames like _The_ _Spider_," she replies, accepting the pistol he places in her hand. "And if our neighbor, Eugene “I know good Branzino” Thompson is a secret assassin, I'll eat my shoe."

Peter laughs. "You didn't think _ I _ was a secret assassin," he points out, shooting a few rounds at the car behind them.

"No. I didn't." 

Michelle's knuckles go white on the steering wheel, but she manages to resist the urge to slam on the brakes and make an unseatbelted Peter go flying through the windshield. Tension fills the minivan as their easy banter quickly evaporates, and the silence is punctuated by periodic peels of gunfire hitting their car. 

"I wasn't in the Peace Corps. And my parents died when I was five, so I'm an orphan," Michelle confesses out of the blue. He doesn't know everything about her either. In fact, she's had him fooled all these years, too.

"What?" Peter turns around, then yelps and ducks when a bullet whizzes through the open hatchback. "Then who walked you down the aisle?"

"Paid actor."

"What?!" Peter's eyes bulge. "I can't believe I brought my real aunt to our wedding."

"You leave May out of this," warns Michelle 

"Me? Leave May—she's _ my _ aunt!"

"So you say."

He scoffs and goes back to shooting at their pursuers, muttering to himself. Leaning on the gas pedal, Michelle guns it across a busy intersection and turns the wrong way, causing one of the sedans following them to get hit by oncoming traffic from multiple directions. 

They continue down a side street unscathed as she takes them off the highway and into the quiet winding roads of suburban Queens. Michelle takes a slow, deep breath, and tries to banish the burning behind her eyes. But her breath catches and she sobs lightly. 

“Are you okay, hon—uh, Michelle?” Peter looks over at her with a familiar look of concern, but the familiarity just makes her stomach clench. “I can take over driving if you want to shoot at some armored cars and newbie assassins? Very cathartic.”

She chuckles lightly between snorting back tears. Who is this ridiculous man she married? Ridiculous and _ dangerous_, she reminds herself, particularly because he’s so good at hiding it, at making her forget what he really is and what he can do.

After they successfully destroy or lose the armored sedans pursuing them, Peter and Michelle continue bickering over their combat styles and newly discovered personal secrets. 

She learns that Peter made his first kill at seventeen, and that his target was the man who had shot and killed his uncle Ben, the Starks’ previous enforcer, which is how he ended up as the fourth generation in the 'family business'.

Michelle in turn tells him about being one of SHIELD’s youngest recruits and how much of her life had revolved around training, alone and without any family ties, as well as the grueling sacrifices she made to stay ahead of everyone else. 

She doesn’t, however, mention that marrying Peter, that just being with him, had felt like she'd finally taken something for herself, something selfish and delicious and all hers—because it was all a lie. They were merely each other's cover, futile attempts at a normal life, and the music just finally stopped.

“I never told you, but I was married once before," Peter admits.

With a violent twist of the steering wheel, Michelle swerves the car, making Peter fall towards her, and she smacks him repeatedly with her free hand. 

"Ow! Michelle?” Peter rubs his head. “What's wrong with you!?

“You're what's wrong with me!”

“It was a drunken Vegas thing.”

“Oh, that's better! That's much better!" Michelle shakes her head. "What's her name and social security number?"

Peter rolls his eyes. "Honey, you're not gonna kill Gwen."

"_Gwen_, huh? I'll toss her off a bridge if she gets any bright ideas," Michelle grumbles, putting both hands on the steering wheel again. 

After a while, she asks, "Do you even need glasses?"

"Nope. People just take me more seriously because glasses make me look smarter," says Peter. "I have twenty-fifteen vision, actually."

"Shut up, that is not a thing."

He shrugs and winks. "I'll keep wearing the glasses if you like 'em."

Michelle snorts but keeps her eyes on the road. "You don't need to care about what I like anymore."

"Of course I do, you're still my wife." 

Her eyes flick over at him, which was a terrible mistake; he meets her gaze with those big brown eyes, even more puppy-like without his glasses. There are cuts and bruises all over his face, but he's still grinning at her.

Michelle clears her throat and looks back at the road. "Well, how about I park this minivan somewhere private and you show me how much you still care?"

Peter's shit-eating grin widens. "Flash is _ really _ gonna hate that."

===

Peter slides into the seat across from Happy, his ironically nicknamed Stark handler, and looks over his shoulder to survey the rest of Delmar's bodega. It's the usual crowd of sleepy diners for the middle of the day, but one could never be too sure.

"Hey, Hap."

"Hey yourself," the man says without looking up from his lunch. "I told you, your name's been on the docket since dawn. Your lady, too." Happy takes a bite of his sandwich. "Open contract, class one, seven figure bounty--each. You need to finish this. Fast."

"Seven figures? Nice!" exclaims Peter, earning a decidedly unhappy scowl from his co-worker.

Happy leans in close and hisses across the table, "Dammit, Pete, tell me you got smart and that you killed that lying bitch."

Michelle spins around in her chair at the bar adjacent to Peter and Happy's booth, smiling wolfishly. "This lying bitch, sweaty man?"

Happy yelps, clutching at his chest. "Jesus! You're gonna give me a heart attack, lady!" 

"Happy! Focus. We got problems," Peter interrupts, adjusting his baseball cap lower over his face.

"Problems? Crack addicts got problems, my friend. You two are smoked," the older man replies grimly, wadding up his sandwich wrapper. "You've got the entire Family gunning for you now, on top of fucking SHIELD. The other families are gonna have a field day with this..."

"And what about you, Hap? Where you at?" Peter asks with both hands splayed on the table. 

"Me? Where am I at?" Happy sighs. "I found myself dragging my feet this morning. But the real million dollar question, and I mean millions, where are _ you _ at?"

Peter looks over his shoulder again, then at Michelle, and then back at Happy. "I'm pissed off. They blew up my house, they shot at my wife. My own 'family'!"

"You're breaking Tony's heart, you know."

A dark shadow crosses Peter's face. "That's convenient. Now he cares? Come on, Happy, how bad is it? How much of it is just smoke, for show?" 

"You remember Germany? Small potatoes next to this." 

"That was you?" Michelle interrupts, impressed. "At the Leipzig Halle Airport? Wow. That was a blood bath." It was the last confrontation of the so-called 'Civil War' among the most powerful crime families on the continent, and the Stark Family had emerged on top thanks to their mysterious enforcer. 

Happy scrunches his face up in disgust. "Is that a turn-on for you two? Ugh, don't tell me. By the way, your shirt's buttoned up wrong, Pete. Didn't she try to kill you with a car?"

Peter shrugs nonchalantly, but reaches over to put a hand on Michelle's knee, and she smiles at him. "And with guns. And her fists. My wife's a real Renaissance woman."

"If you two separate from each other, you got a shot. Not a great shot, Peter, but _ a _ shot," says Happy, giving Peter a pointed look while trying to ignore Michelle's death glare.

"Wouldn't be worth it," says Peter, turning to his wife. She bites her bottom lip, but a small smile escapes again. 

"You're gonna be blacklisted, completely out of the Family, you know that, right?" Happy continues, trying to knock some sense into Peter.

"She's my family, Hap."

He sighs, rolling the ball of aluminum foil from his sandwich on the table listlessly. "You two stay together, you're dead. Unless... you can find something they want more than they want you."

Peter and Michelle exchange a look, and for a moment she can feel that electrifying feeling of being truly seen by someone. A wordless understanding and decision passes between them, and he squeezes her knee again before turning back to his friend. "Thanks for everything, Happy."

Exhaling loudly, the other man nods in defeat. "Good luck, kid. Both of you."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Jones look for a bargaining chip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the kudos and comments! 
> 
> Your wonderful feedback and enthusiasm is what made this grow from a one-shot prompt fill into a multi-chapter fic I can't help going back to...

"I told you to wait for my signal. You didn't wait for my signal," says Michelle, trying to keep her voice neutral, which makes her sound even harsher. Good.

"Well, I improvised," Peter replies blithely, staring out the window at the long stretch of road.

"You deviated from the plan," she snaps.

"The plan was flawed."

"The plan was _ not _ flawed." She keeps driving, periodically glancing at the rearview mirror for any suspicious cars that might be tailing them. 

"Michelle, ninety percent of this job is instinct," says Peter, turning to look at her. "You gotta trust your, you know, tingle."

"My tingle?"

"Your Michelle-sense or whatever."

"Is that what you call your instincts?'

Peter stretches his arms out and folds them behind his head. "Actually, I call it my Spider-sense."

"Well, your Spidey-sense or whatever set off every alarm in the goddamn building!"

"My Spider-sense got the job done. It may not have been the Michelle show…"

"No, it was the Peter show: it was impulsive and reckless. Just like that time you tried to build a real lightsaber and the fire department came, or when you turned our barbeque grill into a Death Star and pissed off the HOA, or like our honeymoon—"

"You said you wanted to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower!" exclaims Peter.

"Not by illegally sneaking up there in the middle of the night—"

"Oh yeah, I'm sure you really hated that," he says sarcastically. "Hated it enough to blow me while overlooking the city of lights—"

"Well, it _ was _ still our honeymoon," Michelle says defensively, trying not to think about the rush and excitement from that night, or how good he tasted. Maybe she didn't hate it. "The point is, you are always the first to break team and go off to do your own thing, damn what anyone else planned."

Peter scoffs. "You don't want a teammate, you want a servant for hire."

"I want someone I can count on."

He winces at that and sighs heavily. “Michelle, there's no _ air _ around you anymore.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asks, gripping the steering wheel tighter.

“It means there's no room for mistakes, no mistakes whatsoever. No spontaneity. Who can answer to that?”

“Well, you don't have to. Because this isn't even a real marriage.”

A heavy silence fills the vehicle.

“Who _ are _ you people?!” a voice cries out from the back of the van.

Turning around at the same time, both Peter and Michelle shout at their hostage, "Shut up!"

===

"I realize you witnessed the missus and I working through a few domestic issues back in the car," Peter says to their hostage, who's tied to a chair, as he paces back and forth in the cramped motel room. "That's regrettable, but don't take that to be a sign of weakness. That would be a mistake on your part." 

Peter pauses and looks over at Michelle, who is drumming her fingers impatiently against a nightstand. "Honey. Do you mind?"

"Wrap it up," she says sharply, but ceases her drumming and crosses her arms instead.

"Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to undermine me in front of the hostage? Sends a mixed message," he hisses back.

"Sorry." Michelle doesn't seem sorry, but Peter has never seen her contrite before to know what that would look like.

Peter turns back to their hostage. "Where was I?"

"'_Mistake on your part'_," the other man repeats without missing a beat.

Peter exhales out of his nose. "Shut up."

After their meet up with Happy, he and Michelle had snuck into Fisk Tower to get a hold of Quentin "Mysterio" Beck—the mark from the botched job that started this entire mess and, hopefully, their key bargaining chip with their former employers.

While Michelle cased the facility, Peter explained how Beck actually used to work for the Starks as a fellow hitman, but when he sold out to one of the Family's top rivals, Peter was sent to take him out before he could give Fisk Industries any critical intel about the Starks. 

Their asset extraction started out straight-forward enough, until a wrong turn became Peter taking down about a dozen guards and setting off a few explosives on his way out of the building with an unconscious Beck in tow. An unfortunate detour, he'll admit, but ultimately a successful mission despite his wife's criticisms. 

With Beck alive and conscious now, they can find out what intel he has on the Family that is so valuable that it's worth killing for; perhaps that's the piece of leverage Peter and Michelle need to get rid of the bounties on their heads. 

But after interrogating their prisoner for an hour and getting nowhere, Peter is starting to get frustrated. He promised himself that he wouldn't revert to his old tactics; the Spider was dead, along with the ruthless violence and cold efficiency he used to employ to serve the Stark crime family. 

So he tries diplomacy again.

“Look, _ Mysterio_, we're just trying to have a conversation here, and you've got a few options. Option A—you talk, we listen, no pain," says Peter, sitting across from Beck with his arms crossed. "Option B—you don't talk, I remove your thumbs with pliers, it will hurt. Option C—I like to vary the details a bit but the punchline is... you die.”

Bored, Beck squints at Peter and says, "Actually can I have a soda or a juice or—"

Standing up from where she's been silently watching the interrogation, Michelle swiftly picks up the telephone on the desk and swings it around, smashing it into Beck's face with a crack. The receiver goes flying against the wall, sending bits of shattered plastic to the ground.

Jerking his head back, Beck yelps loudly and cries out, "Fuck! Okay, okay! Option A! Ow! You're fucking insane!"

"Hey!" Peter snaps. "Don't call my wife insane."

Tossing her hair over her shoulder, Michelle glances at her husband. "Thanks, dork." 

"Anytime, babe."

Beck makes a gagging sound. "So _ this _ is how you're going to torture me…" 

"What do you have on the Starks that Fisk wants so badly?" she demands, towering over him. Her eyes are cold and focused, but Peter can sense her frustration seething beneath the surface, and he can't help admiring how savagely beautiful she is right now.

"Wouldn't you like to know, sweetheart?" Beck sneers as blood drips out of his nose. But he flinches when she picks up the remains of the broken telephone and sets it on the nightstand in front of him as a reminder. He glares at it and relents. "I've been working for Tony for a real long time. I know all his darkest, dirtiest secrets. The kind that could ruin the entire Family."

"Like what?" asks Michelle, leaning in, her face softening with curiosity.

Beck's calculating eyes flit toward Peter then back to her. "Like the most disgusting and depraved hits he's ever ordered—and had your boy here execute. Wanna hear all about them?"

She turns to Peter and gives him a meaningful look. "Babe, why don't you go get us some ice from the machine?"

"Yeah, squirt. Run along so me and the missus can get some quality time together," Beck taunts, winking at Peter. "I wonder what she's willing to do to get her hands on my... information."

Peter clenches his fists so tight that he cracks his knuckles. "Like hell I'm leaving, _ Quentin_."

He and Beck had barely ever crossed paths when they were working for Stark, but Peter is pretty sure Beck would never have been privy to that sort of highly confidential information, at least not without nefarious means. He was just a low-level hitter, the kind the Starks would send to rough up their rivals' thugs or send a warning message.

"I'm Mysterio! The best hitter any of the seven crime families has ever seen!" he shouts, struggling against his restraints again. "You're just a scared little kid. Tony should've picked _ me _ to be his top enforcer after Ben died! But he'll see what a huge mistake he made, he'll be sorry. You'll all be!"

"So you betrayed the Family because you didn't get the promotion you wanted?" Peter asks, his jaw twitching.

"I offered my services and highly classified intelligence to an organization that could recognize my value," Beck sniffs indignantly.

"You mean you sold out your 'family' to the highest bidder," says Michelle, bored. "Your intel couldn't have been _ that _ valuable though, or SHIELD would've wanted me to bring you in alive."

Beck's face screws up into a scowl. "The stuff I know could take down the entire Stark dynasty. '

"You mentioned that," she says, looking him in the eyes, "but what I'm really interested in is what you have on my dear husband here."

Peter's throat goes dry. There's no way Beck would know about the jobs Peter hated the most, the ones that he wants to forget. But if he does, this isn't how he wanted Michelle to find out.

A deranged smile breaks out on Beck's face, and he excitedly launches into an elaborate story about the victims Peter has drugged and tortured, both mentally and physically, in long sessions filled with hallucinations and grotesque dismemberment.

Every time Peter starts to protest that he never did any of those things, Michelle hushes him and encourages Beck to continue, giving him her rapt attention.

It makes Peter want to punch a wall.

"Your husband is quite the sick freak. I told Tony it was a mistake, that _ I _ was supposed to be the next in line... and then he fired me! Said _ I _ was... unstable. Can you believe that?" Beck scoffs, looking back and forth between Michelle and Peter for validation. 

"Fired?" Michelle repeats. "I thought you turned on Stark first. Didn't realize this was a disgruntled ex-employee situation—"

"It was more than that! I was gonna leave anyway, he just beat me to the punch. Doesn't matter, I knew Tony was gonna send the pipsqueak to try to take me out," Beck replies smugly. "So I tipped SHIELD off that the infamous Spider might be making an appearance at Fisk Tower that night."

Michelle's lip twitches. "Nobody told me about a set-up for Peter when they assigned me to the mission—"

"It was a set-up for you, too, hon. Did you not realize?" Beck says patronizingly. "Didn't take Stark or your old buddies at SHIELD too long to figure out that you two were hitched. And it didn't take much to convince them you could be a Stark mole, in cahoots with your criminal husband."

"You were bait," says Michelle, the truth dawning on her with sickening clarity. "The agency and Stark… they were both in on it, they set us up." She turns to Peter. "It wasn't an accident that we were both sent on the same job. They wanted us to take each other out. Or at least test me to see what I'd do."

Their hostage laughs. "It's easy to fool people when they're already fooling themselves."

"I knew it," says Peter, standing up. "You're a damn fraud, Quentin. You don't have any valuable information, it was all a trick—"

"Illusion! I created an illusion and you fell for it! Because you're just a dumb muscle, who does anything and everything Tony tells you to do," Beck spits out, his face twisted up in fury. "You know, maybe if you were good enough, Ben might still be alive!" 

Peter freezes and his face pales at the single truth coming out of Beck's mouth. Maybe Beck was right, Peter wouldn't have gotten his position so young if Ben hadn't died. He still blames himself for his uncle's death, for not being fast enough or ruthless enough that day. 

Even his subsequent vengeance-fueled rampage had only served to "prove" to Tony that Peter had what it took to be a real killer, not realizing that it was grief and a deathwish that led Peter to slaughter everyone involved with Ben's murder.

A touch on his arm jolts Peter out of his dark memories, and he turns to meet Michelle's steady gaze. She squeezes his arm and says, "Beck's useless. He's been useless this whole time, except as bait for us. He'll say anything because he doesn't know anything. We should get out of here ASAP."

"I know lots of things! Everything! And I won't apologize for being the smartest one in the room!" Beck protests, unsuccessfully trying to leap out of the chair he's tied to.

With a quick jab to his nose with the heel of her palm, Michelle knocks him out cold and kicks the chair over so Beck ends up on the floor, drooling.

"Asshole."

They leave an unconscious Beck behind in the room, and after Peter checks out of the motel, Michelle pulls up to the curb with a new stolen car. 

"I didn't do those things that Beck said," says Peter when he gets into the passenger side. "I've done a lot of stuff I'm not proud of, a _ lot _ of stuff, but not that—"

"I know."

"You do?"

"Of course," she replies, pulling out of the motel lot. "Not The Spider's style. I've studied The Spi—_you _ for a long time, before I ever realized I was sleeping next to the world's second best killer every night." She exhales hard, blowing her bangs out of her eye.

"Second best?" Peter repeats, gritting his teeth. She can't possibly think Beck was actually the best killer out there, that fraud.

"Two hundred and fifty three, remember?" Michelle gestures at herself with a cute little side smile, like she's quoting her best bowling score. He grins back at her, a warm feeling blooming in his chest.

"Aw come on, we took out at least thirty or forty more this week alone," says Peter. "You can have at least half the score—"

"Collateral damage doesn't count," she says, shaking her head. "Otherwise my number would be ridiculous. I'm only counting assigned jobs in the two fifty three."

His jaw drops. Peter's more than impressed, he needs to hear how she managed all that, her techniques and tools, everything. 

"Anyway, The Spider never leaves a trace, his scenes are always clean, sometimes impossible to prove as a homicide," Michelle continues, almost dreamily. "I figure he had to be someone extremely skilled and detail-oriented, down to the last speck of any DNA. Plus his kills were probably quick and precise, efficient, none of the theatrics Beck was going on about."

Hearing Michelle describe his life's work with professional admiration makes Peter blush, and he tries not to smile too much. 

"...which is why I would never have thought that you, Mr. Reckless and Impulsive, were The Spider," she says. After a pause, she licks her lips and admits, "I used to have this fantasy that I'd be the agent to catch The Spider and bring him into SHIELD, and I'd finally get to learn all his secrets. Most of the late nights I had at the office were actually going over your cases, you know? I just couldn't stop myself, couldn't get enough of The Spider—"

"I love you," Peter blurts out. He doesn't care that he looks like a lovesick puppy right now.

Michelle blinks at him and makes a face. "Shut up. And stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I haven't tried to kill you multiple times over the last 72 hours."

Peter smiles crookedly at her. "Maybe I'm looking at you like that because you did. I'm a sucker for a woman who knows her way around a rifle's short stroke gas piston."

That makes his wife laugh. "Happy was right, we are a couple of weirdos."

"Who get turned on by guns?"

"And killing," she adds. "Maybe a good car chase, too."

"But none of that turns me on like you do," says Peter, waggling his eyebrows.

She rolls her eyes at him but doesn't say anything.

When they get on the highway heading west, Michelle clears her throat and says softly, "I love you, too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think the Jones should do now?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Jones hit the open road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, at the end of part I of this AU that won't get out of my head. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, let me know what you think!

After they cross the first state line, Michelle discards her crisply tailored clothes for flip-flops and a sundress from some roadside souvenir shop, and Peter reluctantly puts on a Red Sox baseball cap. 

"Now no one will suspect you of being a self-respecting New Yorker," says Michelle, tugging the hideous red hat onto his head. 

"This feels so wrong," he grumbles, "like I'm cheating on my Mets or something."

They make a pitstop in the late afternoon to switch driving shifts. Peter picks up snacks and coffee at the station market while Michelle takes care of the gas.

He comes out while she's bending over to pump the gas, and he can make out the outline of her panties beneath the thin cheap fabric of her new dress. Michelle turns and catches him looking.

Peter coughs. "Nice dress. Reminds me of the one you were wearing in Bogotá."

Michelle hums in agreement, hooking the nozzle back in its cradle on the gas pump. "Except I'm wearing underwear this time."

"Too bad," says Peter, grinning as he hands her a bag of Fritos and gets into the driver's seat.

When they're back on the road, Michelle kicks her bare feet up onto the dashboard and stretches them out, wriggling her unpainted toes. It makes Peter think of all the times he's peeled stockings off of those endless legs, running his palms up those smooth brown calves, and how he'd massage the soft soles of her feet just to see her toes curl in delight. 

The afternoon sun in their eyes makes Michelle squint a little, her long lashes casting shadows on her cheeks, and her hair is loose and wild. Reclined in the passenger seat of their stolen sedan, she looks more relaxed than he's ever seen her before. Not quite carefree, but like she's finally letting something go. 

"You know what I've been wondering?" Michelle interrupts their comfortable silence after some time on the interstate. "How did Beck know exactly when you'd be doing the hit on him? He was already out of the Family by then. If they were just trying to get rid of us for… being a security breach or whatever, why involve Beck?"

Peter's face darkens. "You're right. He could have someone on the inside at Stark," he says—that'd be better than if Tony had sold him out, he supposes. "I just don't know who to trust anymore."

Michelle doesn't say anything. Not that he expected her to tell him he could trust her—he doesn't, he knows he shouldn't, and he appreciates that she doesn't lie to him about it.

"Hey," Peter says after another stretch of silence, "did I ever tell you about the time I took down an arms dealer who wore a giant metal vulture costume?"

"No," she says excitedly, sitting up. "Did I ever tell you about the time I smashed a killer drone with a medieval morningstar?"

During the drive through the rest of the state of Pennsylvania, they trade all the stories they couldn't share with each other before, comparing injuries and laughing over near misses. 

Peter's never had someone to do that with before. There was always a natural rivalry and distrust among the Family's hitters; only one could be the head enforcer, and a new one could always take over.

But with Michelle, he could talk endlessly about everything—from hand-to-hand combat techniques to their preferred weapons and equipment, and their favorite jobs as well as the ones that still haunt them. 

If he met her now, Peter thinks he'd fall for her all over again.

Around sunset, Michelle starts nodding off with her head leaning against the window, but gets jolted awake whenever they drive over a pothole or speed bump. They're still over two hours away from their stop for the night, but Peter pulls off onto the side of the highway so she can sleep uninterrupted for a bit.

Maybe they could live like this, drifters on the open road, a couple of nobodies with no names and no history. Nothing but empty highway stretching out ahead of them, they could just disappear into the Appalachians looming along the horizon and never look back.

The sky is aflame in orange and purple streaks as the sun sets, casting its dying light into the car. Peter reaches over to push the drooping strap of Michelle's dress back over her shoulder, and lets his fingers linger against her soft warm skin a little longer. 

A drowsy moan escaped her lips and she shifts into a different sleeping position, which causes the strap to fall over again. Peter reaches over to tuck it up once more, and this time Michelle blinks awake at his touch. 

"Sorry for waking you," he says. "Did you sleep okay?"

Her gaze drifts down to where his hand used to be on her shoulder, then back to his face. Her dark eyes are smoldering and intense. She nods. 

"Good," he replies, barely above a whisper.

The car suddenly feels too small to contain them and the new heaviness in the air while they're parked there on the edge of the dark highway.

Michelle puts a hand on his leg, and Peter swallows thickly. He can't stop thinking about how easy it would be, to run his hands down her body and tug that damn dress off entirely. 

Always a step ahead of him, as usual, Michelle slowly shrugs both straps off her shoulders, letting the top of her dress slip further down her chest. She tilts her chin up at him, silently challenging him to up the ante or fold.

Grunting from the tightness in the crotch of his jeans, Peter pulls his t-shirt over his head to reveal his biceps and chest. He catches the way Michelle's breath hitches as she stares at his body, so he begins to unbuckle his belt, grinning. 

Licking her lips, she makes a grab for his belt and yanks it off completely, then pulls him in for a kiss by the back of his neck. Groaning, he runs his hands up under her dress, gripping her thighs.

"Backseat," Michelle gasps between kisses. "Now."

===

The motel smells like stale cigarettes and Pine-Sol cleaner, but the neon sign out front advertised free cable TV and air conditioning. It's the exact kind of nothing place in the middle of nowhere that no one cares about.

"Do you regret it?" Peter asks after they've checked in for the night. "Losing it all, everything you worked for because of me?"

"It's just a job," Michelle replies, sweeping their room for any bugs, of both the surveillance or critter variety. "And it's not your fault. Don't give yourself that much credit."

She tenses when Peter wraps his arms around her, but she doesn't shrug him off. 

"You don't have to say that," he says, "it's not just a job. I get it, more than anyone, and you don't have to… we don't have to pretend anymore."

Closing her eyes, Michelle savors the feeling of Peter rubbing his thumb in comforting circles along her back, and his touch sends a tingle down her spine.

She doesn't even know what's real anymore, not since she found out her life wasn't what she thought it was, that her husband was secretly the infamous mob enforcer she's always dreamt of hunting down. 

And now she's on the run with him, hiding out in shady motels and having sex in cars. How did her life get here? Why does it excite her so much?

Maybe focusing on the physical keeps Michelle grounded in reality, each touch keeping her connected to him. She thinks he knows this, too. 

"I'm still not getting naked on those sketchy bed sheets," she says, wrinkling her nose against his neck, and Peter laughs. 

===

Next morning, on her way back from the vending machines, Michelle can tell she's being followed the moment she crosses the motel parking lot. 

They're skilled, probably professional, but definitely not the the best. Maybe it’s just a surveillance detail instead of a hit, or perhaps they've got partners hiding elsewhere, also watching her.

Giving no sign that she's onto her stalker, Michelle continues striding past the motel’s in ground pool, which looks like it’s been empty for years except for rain water and scum accumulating in the deep end. The rusted chain link fence behind her rattles softly. Amateur.

Michelle can neutralize the threat easily and discreetly, but she could also send a very clear statement to their pursuers. However, they’re outside in the middle of the day, so she’d have to stash the body inside until nighttime. 

Peter would make a joke about how hard it'll be to get blood out of the moldy motel carpet of their room, and she'll say something about how there are already enough mystery fluids for it not to matter. Michelle smiles to herself, glad that she and Peter can talk about that stuff now.

Maybe she can drop the body in the empty pool under a tarp? Whatever, she’ll figure it out live.

She bends down, pretending to fix her flip flops, and when the shadow of her stalker is close enough, she whirls around and sweeps him off his feet with a swift kick.

He goes down with a grunt, his sunglasses skittering across the asphalt, and Michelle immediately pulls him into a headlock. 

"Why the fuck are you following me?"she demands.

"'chelle!" the man grunts, raising his hands in the air in surrender. "Jus' t-talk!"

He's about middle-aged, seems well-groomed and unarmed. She still has her pocket knife and a needlepoint tucked in her hair, so Michelle warily releases him. 

The man coughs a few times and gasps for breath. "You're a lot stronger than you look, for such a skinny kid."

"_Kid_?"

Before he can respond, Michelle yanks the baseball cap off the man's head and her eyes widen in surprise. She's seen that face before—in her case files, all over the news, in tabloids every other week. 

"You're Tony Stark."

"The one and only," he rasps, rubbing at his throat. "And you, Mrs. Jones, are a hard lady to track down."

"But not impossible, which is a problem," she replies, tense and ready to strike again.

Tony holds up his hands in surrender. "I just wanna talk."

"Yeah, I've heard that one before. What about your henchmen? They also want to 'just talk'?"

He shakes his head. "No henchmen. Only me."

Michelle tries to scan the area around them without taking her eyes off of Tony as he gets back on his feet. They appear to be alone, but that only makes her more wary of him.

"What do you want?" she asks.

"Not here." Tony retrieves his sunglasses and motions at her to follow him, as if she didn't just have him in a chokehold minutes ago. "Let's go get pancakes."

===

"Does everyone know where we are now?" Michelle asks the moment their server leaves after taking their order. 

Peter is probably wondering what is taking her so long with the vending machines. The thought that someone, who's not her mission handler, is waiting for her and actually cares if she makes it back makes Michelle's chest ache in the best way.

"No," Tony admits. "Just me, for now."

"Unless?"

He glances around to make sure they're not being watched. The two of them are tucked in a corner booth at an all-day breakfast spot in town, at the only seats not within a window's line of sight. "Unless you listen very carefully to me."

Michelle scowls at him, clenching her fist on the Formica table. She's sick of being told what to do and other people fucking up her life. 

"Why the fuck would I listen to you? You betrayed Peter!" she hisses under her breath.

"It wasn't me that ordered the set up! Just the hit on Beck," says Tony defensively. "And how do I know I can trust you, _ Agent _ Jones? Who do you really work for? Who are you trying to get him to work for?"

"I'm his _ wife_. I'm trying to get him to work for _ me _ for a change!" Michelle retorts. "He still hasn't fixed the garage door like he promised and it's been months."

Tony lets out a surprised chuckle. "The other families are gonna be gunning for him now, if they're not after him already," he continues. "They don't know about you yet, so try to keep it that way."

They both stop talking when their server returns to drop off their food. 

"Thanks… Harriet," says Tony, squinting at her name tag. He looks up and smiles charmingly at the sour-faced woman, and their server just grunts and refills their coffee before shuffling off again. 

"And Quentin Beck?" Michelle prompts him to continue. "Did you fire him or did he quit? What's his beef with you?"

The man sighs heavily. "Look, you gotta understand, Peter's the best at what he does," says Tony, cutting into his flapjacks. "Not just the killing, mind you, though he's my top guy for that, too. He's reliable and always gets the job done, no mess and no witnesses. No ego bullshit, you know?

But Beck was always trying to find a way to stand out, impress an audience or something with his kills. At first, I thought he was just trying to find a gimmick like The Spider, with his weird capes and that whole "Mysterio" thing. 

Then he started drugging his marks and torturing them with hallucinations and drawn out mind-games," Tony gestures with a spinning finger at his temple and whistles, "that's when I realized the guy was certifiably _ cuckoo_."

"But you didn't get rid of him _ permanently_, you just kicked him out of the Family," she says suspiciously. "Weren't you worried he'd go selling Stark secrets to the other crime families?"

Tony shakes his head dismissively and pours another round of maple syrup on his plate. "Beck doesn't know crap."

"Then how did SHIELD find out when your hit on Beck was? Someone colluded with the Agency to set us both up, someone who knew the Spider's schedule," says Michelle, the accusation on the tip of her tongue, her eyes locked on the mob bosses'. 

Tony runs a hand down his face and sighs, looking over his shoulder again. "I'm currently dealing with a little… pickle of a situation."

Michelle raises an eyebrow at him.

"Okay, a big pickle. Of the mutinous, back-stabbing, colluding-with-my-enemies variety."

"Peter wasn't trying to betray you—"

"No, no, not Peter. You know Obadiah Stane?"

Michelle nods, recalling the briefs she's studied on the Starks. "Your second-in-command. Was your father's guy, too, back when he was running the Family before he died."

"Well, seems like ol' Obadiah got tired of playing second fiddle and finally decided to take his shot at the king."

Michelle snorts. "But he missed."

"Damn straight he missed," Tony replies smugly, crossing his arms and sitting up. "Fucker thought he could do it with SHIELD's help, so he tried to double cross 'em, too, by pretending to be a whistleblower who wanted to go straight. And what better way to start taking me down than to take out my top muscle first?"

"So he offered them The Spider's real identity, plus where they could find him at his next job," Michelle surmises, repeating what Beck claimed he did. 

"Bingo," says Tony, pointing at her, "and one quick background check would bring up his lovely wife, one of their own. And you know how Fury is about questionable loyalty..."

She's about to protest that her loyalty to SHIELD has never wavered her entire career, that she had no idea that her husband was the most wanted mob hitman on the continent until only days ago, but it all seems pointless now. 

The agency never gave her a chance to explain herself, even after all the years she gave them. Instead, they sided with Obadiah Stane, a career crimelord who was eager to betray his family and associates the first chance he got.

"Obadiah doesn't know I know yet, so until I get that all sorted out, keep disappearing."

"'Sorted out'? And how long is that going to take?"

Clasping his hands together on the table, Tony leans across and says, "Lady, I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse."

With her arms crossed, Michelle stares him down. "I _can't_?"

"Fine, fine! How about I make you an offer you can consider at your leisure, with my assurances you won't want to refuse it?"

"Maybe."

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. "Jesus Christ. Of all the things the kid could've taken after me, he had to go and find a woman as stubborn as Pepper."

Michelle tenses up when Tony reaches for something in his pocket, but he gestures for her to relax and slides a thick manila envelope towards her.

Inside, she finds a pair of passports and driver's licenses, a few wads of cash, and a set of car keys. 

"Your new ride is parked down the road, has a matching registration and everything," Tony explains. "I've got a personal safe house out west that you kids can use while this all blows over. But I don't know who I can trust in the Family right now, so you'll need to find your own way there."

Michelle's eyes dart back up to Tony, who's looking at her intently, trusting her even though she's given him no reason to do so. That's when she understands Peter's loyalty to the Starks, and specifically to Tony. She narrows her eyes at him in suspicion. "What do you want in exchange for this… offer? What do you want from me?"

He takes a sip of coffee from his white mug, running his fingers along his goatee. 

"Just take care of him, will you? He's a good kid." Tony pauses. "He deserves this. To get out of the Family, have regular life."

"Yeah, he's a good man," she agrees, sliding the contents of the envelope back inside. "But I don't think a regular life is what Peter wants."

Tony smiles and puts his cap and sunglasses back on. "I'll leave it up to you to figure out what he wants, boss lady."

When she asks if he wants to see Peter and say good-bye, Tony waves her off, citing an aversion to "mushy displays." She suspects Tony just doesn't want to make it more difficult for Peter to leave, and that he trusts her to tell Peter the truth—that Tony wasn't behind the set-up.

"Now eat your pancakes," he says, pointing at her untouched plate. "Starving kids in Africa and all that. And bring back some wheatcakes for Pete."

===

Michelle inspects her reflection in the side mirror of the car they just got from Tony, touching her newly-dyed dark red locks as it falls over her shoulder. It makes her stand out more than it helps her stay incognito, but she's always wanted red hair. 

It also makes her look like a completely different woman. Maybe this time she'll hide by becoming someone else entirely, someone unrecognizable to anyone who knew Michelle Jones. 

Peter winks at her. "Looking good, red. Ready to hit the road?" He's traded his Red Sox cap for a less offensive, nondescript navy hat.

"Thanks, Mr. Parker. And you can call me Mary Jane," she replies, pulling him close by the back of his neck. "Now c'mere, tiger, and kiss me before we go."*

FIN

(of Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Amazing Spider-Man #143
> 
> Comment & subscribe to the series of you'd like to read more of Peter and MJ as sexy assassins on the run across America, and let me know what you liked the most and hope to see next! 😘


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